Thursday, January 31, 2013

Germany has re-opened an investigation into the massacre of 642 citizens in the small French town of Oradour-sur-Glane. According to the UK’s Daily Mail, more than 68 years later, German authorities believe there may be six men still at large, all now in their late 80s, who were members of SS Panzer Division that committed the atrocity.
There had been several probes into the massacre, all shut down due to a lack of evidence, but an historian in 2010 discovered documents implicating all six suspects, still alive and now aged between 85 and 86.

A German prosecutor and senior police officers recently visited the village, which the Nazis burned down. The village has been left untouched since the massacre to serve both as a shrine to those who died and as a reminder of the evils of Nazi Germany.The team of investigators from Berlin want to speak to the two living survivors of the bloodbath, carried out in revenge for the capture of a German officer by French resistance fighters in a nearby village.
Robert Hebras, 87 – was one of only six villagers who escaped the carnage – said: ‘It is a very strange moment to see German officials here 68 years later.

“But I applaud what they are doing and pray there is still time to bring to justice any of the monsters still alive did this to us.”
Prosecutor Andreas Brendel told French reporters in Oradour: “We hope the survivors may be able to help us identify any culprits who are still alive.”

In 1953 a French military tribunal sentenced 21 Nazi soldiers to death for the atrocities, but their sentences were commuted in the name of ‘national reconciliation’ between France and Germany.The only man convicted was SS-Obersturmfhrer Heinz Barth, who gave the order to shoot 20 male victims. Barth was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1983 and released in 1997. He died ten years later in August 2007.

Next time, the lies may be about any of us, or simply our right to speak the truth in public without being accused of denying rights to the very same people who plot to take them away from us.

Anna Baltzer, of the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, who was exposed at Gatestone Institute as lying about her background, is apparently still appearing in a debate Oxford University in the UK today, January 31st, as originally scheduled, after having spoken yesterday at the University of Sussex where she promoted the boycotting of, and divesting from, Israel.
One of the scheduled opponents to debate her on the side defending Israel, Mr. Stephen Pollard, editor of the Jewish Chronicle in London and a former Chairman of European Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism, has already withdrawn from the event. Pollard explained his refusal to appear with Ms. Baltzer because of her lying about Israel, lying about Jews and even lying about her own background; as well as Oxford's giving her an unmerited credibility by keeping her on the speaking panel and refusing to remove her from the event.
Further, on February 4th Ms. Baltzer will be visiting Belgium to address Christian groups and radical groups opposed to Israel's existence, who are openly anti-Semitic and anti-Israel. Baltzer already has a track record of speaking to Presbyterian and other Christian groups in the United States who are receptive to presentations by a Jew opposed to a Jewish national homeland. Her visit to Europe is presumably intended to expand such a base.
Baltzer is apparently going there at the invitation of a Belgian visual artist/cartoonist named Ben Heine, who is widely considered anti-Semitic. Heine's Wikipedia entry cites "the pro-Palestinian and anti-Zionism nature of some of Heine's political art and his participation in a 2006 competition calling for Holocaust-related cartoons on the Iranian website Irancartoon.com." The competition was actually meant to promote Iranian Holocaust-denial. Wikipedia continues, "Heine has been accused of anti-Semitism by critics including the Belgian satirical weekly magazine Pere UBU and the Institute for Global Jewish Affairs," and he has written or drawn many anti-Semitic articles and cartoons equating Jews with Nazis , particularly for the virulently anti-Israel blog Daily Kos, which even found some of his writing openly anti-Semitic enough to have it removed.
Heine once wrote an open letter to Irancartoon.org that said, "We are against all kinds of revisionism, anti-Semitism, racism or xenophobia. We do not at all deny that millions of Jews were horribly murdered by the Nazis." Such a denial of prejudice may get Heine in the door of churches and other organizations, but what Heine says regarding the Jewish people and religious symbolism, and what he does, are completely different. In honor of Baltzer's appearance before Christian groups in Belgium, he created a cartoon that portrays Anna Baltzer as the Pieta with a dead Palestinian Jesus on her lap and Israeli air force jets flying overhead.

Anna Baltzer as the Pieta, by Ben Heine.

Heine's blog also carries a story authored by Anna Baltzer, in which she claims that a Palestinian child was felled by poison gas dispersed by the Israeli army from an IDF base. Baltzer's tales often include alleged atrocities by Israeli soldiers against Arab children, but using only first names of "victims" that are not verifiable , except through herself and her fellow International Solidarity Movement activists. No addresses, no dates, no newspaper articles; even more, no lawsuits against the IDF that such "victims" can file. For example, speaking to a Presbyterian Church in Wyoming, Baltzer told the congregation of a Palestinian mother who was forced to watch several of her children gunned down by Israeli soldiers – a story she was later compelled to recant. When asked why she spread the false story she replied, "I don't think it's hateful to hold a nation responsible for targeting civilians." However, she never condemns missiles fired into Israeli communities from Gaza. On the contrary, Baltzer repeatedly supports Hamas, and in her presentations calls for intifadas [uprisings] against Israel, as does her sponsor, Ben Heine.
Ms. Baltzer has already been proven to have fabricated a tale of a Palestinian woman losing two babies due to an Israeli security checkpoint, put in place to to keep out terrorists. She frequently lectures in the U.S., particularly to Christians and at Presbyterian churches, to incite ill will against Israel. That Anna Baltzer lectures in churches in order to negate Christian support for a Jewish homeland, and apparently consents to be featured as Heine's Christian Pieta -- all the while proclaiming herself a Jew who expresses a need for Zionism and the Jewish state of Israel to be brought down -- are just more examples of how the Palestinian movement continues to promote anti-Semitism in Europe and America among Christians, not just Arabs and Muslims.
What is sad is that our universities, both in the U.S. and the UK, are playing host to this woman, thereby giving her the appearance of academic and intellectual legitimacy, when her goal is to persuade her audiences by lying. She does not promote "peace" or to better the human condition. She pits one side that is from the totalitarian world against the other that is from the democratic West. Our universities and churches are supporting frauds like Anna Baltzer. They should not be. Next time, the lies may be about any of us, or simply our right to speak the truth in public without being accused of denying rights to the very same people who plot to take them away from us.
Any Christian organizations and universities in Europe that are still on Baltzer's tour schedule should cancel invitations for her to speak. That is, unless they, too, are happy to compare an untrustworthy purveyor of malevolent lies to the Virgin Mary.gatestoneinstitute

Reuters: Germany’s switch to renewable energy is bound to fail with consumer prices at a 15-year high while wholesale prices are languishing, the chief executive of Austrian energy group Verbund said. Germany’s market, due to its retreat from nuclear power after Japan’s 2011 Fukushima disaster, was ‘about to collapse’, Wolfgang Anzengruber said, citing a lack of necessary investment that is compounding a broken pricing model.—Eon, Germany’s biggest utility by revenues, is considering the closure of one of Europe’s most modern gas-fired power stations as ructions on the European electricity market forced it to slash its profit forecast for the current year by almost one-third. Eon is planning to shut down of its Irsching plant in Bavaria in March and other plants could follow.achgut

In 2005, many decades too late, the United Nations General Assembly named January 27 as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. This is the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camps. Every UN member state has an official obligation to honor the victims of the Nazi era and also develop educational material about the Holocaust. This indeed takes place in many countries.
Today’s reality is such however, that whatever is Jewish, will come under attack. This also happens in a variety of countries with memorial events related to the Holocaust. Anti-Semites paint graffiti on Holocaust monuments, and the Holocaust is denied by other anti-Semites. In 2009, the important Norwegian TV2 television station broadcast an interview with convicted British Holocaust denier David Irving. The broadcaster even financed Irving’s travel to Norway and his hotel expenses. The journalist who interviewed him displayed little knowledge of the topics discussed.
Holocaust inversion is even worse than denial. Inverters, which even include some Jews, state that Jews and Israel behave like Nazis. In 2010-2011, the German Holocaust foundation Remembrance, Responsibility, Future (EVZ) financed a program with public funds for the Anne Frank School in Gutersloh which hosted Dutch Jewish Holocaust survivor and anti-Israel hate-monger Hajo Meyer.
He equated the suffering of the Palestinians with the persecution and mass murder of Jews in the Holocaust. Leon de Winter, a bestselling Dutch Jewish novelist said that Meyer suffers from extreme "survival guilt." He noted that all Israel-bashing groups love Meyer because of the added factor of his being Jewish and a Holocaust survivor. More...

European political leaders and commentators pretend to fight anti-Semitism; some of them might think they really are fighting anti-Semitism. But as long as they will not take into account the whole nebula, and as long as they will not speak clearly of all its components, what they say and what they do will be useless.
Jews who can do so, leave Europe. Those who do not have the means to leave know they must be extremely careful: it is dangerous again to be a Jew in Europe. It is even more dangerous to be a Jew who supports Israel.
Jews who publicly despise Israel, or who say that the Jewish people does not exist, are widely praised. What Theodor Lessing called "Jüdische Selbsthass" (Jewish self-hatred), in a book published in Germany in 1930, impregnates the atmosphere again.More...

“[The Jews] feel inferior to the nations and societies in which they live, because of the hostility and evil rising in their hearts towards others and for their plots and schemes against the nations who know with certainty that the Jews are the root of conflict in the world, wherever they reside.”
This sentence, as reported by Palestinian Media Watch, is taken from the Palestinian Ma’an News Agency, which is funded by Danish, Dutch and UK governments and the EU, UNDP, and UNESCO.
The article, written by Sawsan Najib Abd Al-Halim, appears on Ma’an’s website, and describes Jews as “the root of conflict in the world,” cursed by Allah, and “outcasts in every corner of the earth.”
According to PMW “Ma’an’s editors did not dissociate themselves from the contents of this Antisemitic article in any way. The article only appeared on Ma’an’s Arabic website and not on its English site. The article was posted on November 18, 2012 and still appears there as of the PMW publication on January 29, 2013.
Here is part of the article as translated by PMW:

“Israel is Trembling”
by Sawsan Najib Abd Al-Halim

“We’re used to seeing vampires in Dracula movies, where the murderer and the vampire act in the dead of night, and as soon as dawn breaks, the murderer disappears and hides during the day.

The brave warrior, who at the very least has moral values, fights in the daytime. In all wars, in all eras, honorable nations conducted their battles during the day and slept at night. But has Israel even a trace of morality?

A brave warrior is proud when he confronts another [warrior] as brave as he, and the more he is struck, the stronger he grows, proud in his struggle and respectful of his adversary. But since Jews are – as our grandparents said of them – sons of death (expression of contempt, meaning ‘a coward,’ -Ed.), they are too cowardly to confront an enemy face to face, especially if their enemy is as well armed as they…

Jews think that their fortresses will protect them from death, but any breach of these fortresses or protective walls instills panic and fear in their hearts, and they are seized by fear and trembling. If a missile falls beyond their protective walls or if even a bullet passes over them, you can see how their hearts fill with horror – and this is because Allah has stricken fear in their hearts and decreed humiliation and degradation upon them until Judgment Day…

Historically, it is known that the lives of Jews have always been war and fighting. The only reason for this is that they have been outcasts in every corner of the earth, and not one nation in the world respects them, for they cause strife, and scheme everywhere they settle. We know that they have been defeated in every war they have fought throughout history, and they have been dispersed in every direction, but Allah’s curse upon them and his fury at them cause them to continue with their transgression and tyranny.

A coward acts brutally when he can, but runs for cover humiliated, when he faces anyone who is his equal. Our fathers told us of one Palestinian before 1948 who was holding a stick while walking the streets of Tel Aviv, and he drove away scores of cowardly Jews…

Psychologically, they have been defeated through the ages and feel inferior to the nations and societies in which they live, because of the hostility and evil rising in their hearts towards others and for their plots and schemes against the nations who know with certainty that the Jews are the root of conflict in the world, wherever they reside.

Jews think that every shout is against them, and what better proof is there than the slogan they voiced to the world – which is ‘Antisemitism.’

Therefore, the only way we can deal with them, when we are weak militarily compared to Israel’s power, is to stick to the threat to annihilate Israel, not to submit to its [Israel's] desire for a cease fire, and keep the flame of resistance burning. Rather than [violently] resist and then back off somewhat, whereby we give them the impression that we are afraid of them. There is nothing wrong with our sitting with them to talk, but the resistance must always continue. Late President Yasser Arafat, peace be upon him, understood the Jews’ weakness, so he showed them the face of peace in negotiations, and at the same time raised the slogan ‘Every day a settler.’ This is the slogan that terrorized the Jews, and which many Palestinians have forgotten. They may have forgotten why the comrade-fighter Marwan Barghouti was arrested. Wasn’t it because he was the one given the job to fulfill this slogan? (Marwan Barghouti is serving 5 life sentences for orchestrating terror attacks against Israeli civilians. -Ed.)

Let us again be united in the message against the Jews and turn the weapons against them. Every time the guns and stones are directed at the Jews, they become angry, seized by fear, their brutality increases and our sacrificing increases more and more. Jews know that the more their brutality increases, so our resolve and defiance are strengthened against them, until Allah will strike terror in their hearts and they will be driven away from our land humiliated. This is revolution until victory.”

Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi cut his visit to Berlin short on account of the protests taking place in cities throughout his country, but he was there long enough to receive a stern warning from German chancellor Angel Merkel. Forthcoming aid from Germany, she said, will be contingent on democratic progress in Egypt.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Merkel told Morsi it’s important that “the different political forces can make their contribution, that human rights are adhered to in Egypt and that, of course, religious freedom is enjoyed.” Germany, whose Volksverhetzung laws ban Holocaust denial, was presumably not pleased with the assertion of a senior Morsi aide that the Holocaust is an American fiction.
This takes place as Egypt’s defense minister warns of the country’s collapse, and President Obama, for his part, boasts that “had it not been for the leadership we showed” there, “you might have seen a different outcome there.” The horror!nationalreview

Wednesday, January 30, 2013

In a ceremony in Gelsenkirchen in western Germany, the Soccer Club Schalke 04 unveiled a plaque outside its stadium, the Veltins-Arena, to commemorate the deaths of nine Jewish club members and supporters during the Holocaust. To add even more poignancy to the event, it was held 80 years to the day that Adolf Hitler rose to power in Germany in 1933.
Before more than 200 people, including Schalke’s General Manager Horst Heldt, Coach Jens Keller and the players Benedikt Hoewedes, Julian Draxler and Christoph Metzelder (who was pictured wearing a skullcap during the ceremony), the club’s financial director Peter Peters said: “It is our obligation to keep the memories alive. Schalke did not protect its Jewish members, sponsors, officials and athletes during the time of National Socialism.”

Germany is marking the 80th anniversary of Adolf Hitler's rise to power with the inauguration of an exhibition in Berlin.
Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke at the ceremony Wednesday to open the new exhibit, which houses The Topography of Terror, an open-air documentation center that traces Hitler's first months in power through photos, newspapers and posters, AFP reported.
"Human rights don't assert themselves. Freedom doesn't preserve itself all alone and democracy doesn't succeed by itself," Merkel said.
"That must be a constant warning for us, Germans," she added, referring to Hitler's arrival at the chancellery.
The exhibition, "Berlin 1933. On the Path to Dictatorship", is built on the site of the former headquarters of the Gestapo, the secret police of the Nazi regime.
Just prior to the anniversary and in light of International Holocaust Memorial Day, Merkel said in her weekly podcast that Germany had "an everlasting responsibility for the crimes of National Socialism, for the victims of World War II, and above all, for the Holocaust".
"We're facing our history, we're not hiding anything, we're not repressing anything. We must confront this to make sure we are a good and trustworthy partner in the future, as we already are today, thankfully," Merkel said.
After winning approximately a third of the vote in the 1932 elections, Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany on Jan. 30, 1933, by the ailing President Paul von Hindenburg, setting Germany on the path to World War II and the Holocaust.
Israel's Reshet Bet radio station featured a discussion by academic experts on Holocaust history and political science where the conditions that allowed Hitler to rise to power in a democracy were analyzed with an eye to today'[s rising European anti-Semitism.israelnationalnews

"Bloodsuckers," "monkeys," and pigs" -- that's how Egyptian President Mohammed Morsy refers to Jews. Just two weeks ago, Morsy offended a group of U.S. Senators by claiming that Jews control the international media. Morsy also belongs to the Muslim Brotherhood, the group whose leader Mohammed Badie was ranked by The Simon Weisenthal Center as the "biggest anti-Semite" on the planet.
But then German Chancellor Angela Merkel decided to surprise us all by inviting the Egyptian President to visit Berlin as her guest today -- the same date Hitler took power in 1933. Yet she is doing this despite the fact that Morsy's rhetoric qualifies him as an out-and-out neo-Nazi. This visit is an insult to Germany's struggle against racism and nationalism over the past sixty years.
It's worth noting that Chancellor Merkel, who belongs to the Christian Democratic Party (CDU), will be hosting a dictator whose government persecutes Christians on a regular basis. In Egyptian prisons, there are now at least four Christians (Ayman Youseef Mansour, Gamal Abdou Masoud,Makarem Diab Said, and Bishoy El-Beheri) who have been jailed -- for up to six years -- simply for expressing their Christian beliefs. This is not even to mention the sectarian propaganda released by the Muslim Brotherhood and the Egyptian presidency against Christians. Persecution reached its peak last September during the crisis over the film Innocence of Muslims(and which resulted in the destruction of Germany's embassy in Sudan). This campaign of religious intolerance continues today.
This week, Morsy's Muslim Brotherhood accused Egypt's Christians of leading criminal groups that were responsible for the killings of more than 50 people during the past week's anti-government demonstrations.
We democratic activists in Egypt are extremely worried about any military cooperation between Germany and Egypt. Germany has always been one of the largest exporters of weapons to Egypt (right behind the United States). Such worries are particularly pronounced at a moment when the Egyptian police and army regularly use western-supplied weapons to crush non-violent protests that call for freedom and democracy. I don't believe that German citizens accept the notion that they can only support their own economy by selling weapons to dictatorships like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, which stand against the rights of their citizens to live in freedom and equality.
Mr. Morsy speaks a lot about respecting court decisions and the rule of law, but at the same time he is protecting a huge number of criminals who are responsible for the death of more than 1200 civilians (over 70 of them were killed after Morsy took power) and the wounding of tens of thousands of protestors since the revolution started. Not a single police or military officer has been punished for these crimes. By contrast, the chief of Military Intelligence, Abdel-Fattah El-Siessy -- who, by the way, oversaw the process of my own torture on February 4, 2011 -- received a promotion from Morsy, who recently appointed him as Minister of Defense. My official complaints have been ignored by all legal institutions in Egypt.
Chancellor Merkel, relations between countries presuppose a certain common ground of shared values. Diplomatic relations should not justify support for dictatorships. Otherwise you should also invite and host both Iran's Ahmadinejad and Sudan's Bashir. I'm sure they are both eager to have better relations with Germany (and to buy more German weapons).
As you know, Chancellor Merkel, your compatriots in East Germany took to the streets against communism and dictatorship in 1953, but their protests were crushed by a government that enjoyed the support of many powerful countries. Please don't help the rising Egyptian dictatorship to crush freedom with Germany's help. More...

By Carl Savich
In this U.S. and German sponsored attack, Operation Storm, modeled on Nazi blitzkrieg strategy (the Nazi strategy of ‘lightning war’) and the U.S. Gulf War Operation Desert Storm, the Croats engaged in a large-scale planned and systematic destruction and plunder of all Serbian dwellings, industrial facilities, hospitals, schools, and churches and historical monuments. The Orthodox Krka Monastery, built in the 14th century, was destroyed and looted, as were 43 other Orthodox churches in the Bukovice and Ravni Kotari regions. The 15th century Krupa Orthodox monastery was burned down by the Croatian army.
On September 27, 1995, a UN spokesperson reported that UN military observers had visited 240 villages in former Sector South and had found that 73% of the buildings had been burned down. In an October 12, 1995 report, the UN stated that UN observers had visited 389 villages in Sector South and had found that 16,578 houses had been burned down or severely damaged.
In launching this massive attack, the Croat government received not only the diplomatic and political support of the U.S. and Germany, but also U.S. and German military support. Routinely, Jumbo jets from Iran would bring massive shipments of arms to Zagreb openly. These massive arms shipments to Croatia from Iran and other Islamic countries were difficult to miss. The U.S. government, however, allowed illegal arms shipments to continue to flow to Croatia, in flagrant contravention of the UN arms embargo imposed on the former Yugoslavia, an embargo the U.S. voted for. But in 1994, the U.S. unilaterally announced that it would break the UN arms embargo for Croatia and the Bosnian Muslims. Weapons and military equipment flowed into Croatia.
All that was needed now was military training and planning. This was provided to the Croat government by Military Professional Resources Inc. (MPRI), an Alexandria, Virginia based firm which provides ‘generals for hire’ for those nations which seek to purchase military expertise, or to rent a general, one of the more bizarre aspects of the New World Order with an absurd new role of the “military industrial complex” within it. The firm had over 2,000 retired generals and admirals and other officers on call and a staff of 160 full-time employees. Retired four-star General Carl Vuono headed MPRI’s growing overseas business and Crosbie “Butch” Saint, once the chief of the US Army’s operations in Europe, headed the MPRI office in Europe.
For the year of 1994, MPRI had 15 military advisers in Croatia, a contingent headed by retired two-star General Richard Griffiths. According to MPRI, ”they have been teaching the Croats to run a military force in a democracy,” and recently signed a second contract to reorganize Croatia’s Defense Ministry. MPRI has close contacts with the Pentagon, US State Department, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).

On left, the body of an elderly Krajina Serb woman killed in Siroka Kula on August 8, 1995 by Croat forces during the military assault. On right, the body of a Krajina Serb soldier in Bruvno on September 2, 1995 with the flesh stripped to the bone by Croat troops.
More...

The Israel Post Office chief said Wednesday that the demand for gas masks has seen a dramatic uptick in recent weeks as the fear that chemical weapons from Syria could fall into the hands of terrorists has increased.
Speaking to Israel Radio, Haim Mazaki said there has been “increased demand in recent days following reports about the transfer of chemical weapons to terrorist groups in Syria.”
On Sunday Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at the weekly cabinet meeting: “We must look at our surroundings, at what is happening in Iran and its proxies, what is happening on other fronts, with the deadly weapons in Syria… The Middle East is not waiting for the outcome of the elections and does not pause while the government is assembled.”
Since his statements were publicized 4,000 gas masks have been distributed, compared to an average of 1,400 per week. In total, 4.7 million gas masks have been distributed. The total population of Israel is close to 8 million.algemeiner

These reactions are indicative of the contempt the political elites have for the concept of democratic accountability.

In a high-stakes gamble, British Prime Minister David Cameron said last week, in his long anticipated speech about the European Union, that he would like the EU to be an open, internal market based on nation states rather than the centralizing and protectionist supranational European superstate currently in the making. To achieve this vision, the EU treaty, which explicitly calls for "an ever closer union," needs to be revised. Cameron promised the British public that he would renegotiate the treaty to allow Britain to opt out of centralizing EU policies. He also committed to holding a referendum on Britain's EU membership after the renegotiation, or by 2017 at the latest.
Cameron says he is confident that he will be able to persuade his EU colleagues of his views. If he fails, however, it will leave the British Conservative Party with no other option than leading Britain out of the EU. The odds, moreover, are against Cameron.
His speech was not well received on the continent: Cameron was accused of pandering to the British electorate. Guido Westerwelle, Germany's Foreign Minister sniffed that Cameron wants to "cherry pick" which aspects of EU membership to take or leave. Bernard Cazeneuve, France's minister for the EU, said that the EU is not "an a la carte package." Spain and Italy were equally critical, while EU President Herman Van Rompuy cast doubt on whether a major revision of the treaty – essential to Cameron's strategy – would take place.
These reactions are indicative of the contempt the political elites have for the concept of democratic accountability. Cameron was right to insist that democratic accountability is currently lacking in the EU, while this should be one of the basic principles on which it is built. As The Wall Street Journalnoted: "It says something about the mentality of too many European officials today that they are shocked that a British Prime Minister would put British interests and values at the core of his concerns."
The reason why so many European politicians seem prepared to sacrifice prosperity and democratic representation on the altar of centralization is that their political cultures lack the democratic tradition of Britain. It is no coincidence that Switzerland, the most democratic country in Europe and also the one with the longest democratic tradition, categorically refuses to join the EU.
Apart from Switzerland, the strongest democratic traditions are found in the countries belonging to the so-called Anglosphere. Cameron began his speech by referring to the British character, "independent, forthright, passionate in defense of our sovereignty." He added that "in Europe's darkest hour, we helped keep the flame of liberty alight. Across the continent, in silent cemeteries, lie the hundreds of thousands of British servicemen who gave their lives for Europe's freedom." Indeed, and the same applies to Americans, Canadians and Australians – the other nations of the so-called Anglosphere, the set of English-speaking nations of European stock with a Western cultural heritage.
In his 2004 book, The Anglosphere Challenge, American author James C. Bennett argued that the cultural and legal traditions of English-speaking nations make them particularly sensitive to anti-democratic tendencies. Historian Andrew Roberts points out that the Anglosphere was central in defeating Nazism and Communism in Europe. He says that it will also be crucial for the defeat of Islamism. Bat Ye'or argues in her book Eurabia, that the EU is one of the vehicles of Islamization in Europe today. By undermining the national identities of its member-states, which are seen as incompatible with the aim of building a pan-European superstate, the EU is also depriving the European peoples of the identity which they badly need if they are to assimilate the masses of Muslim immigrants who have settled in Europe during the past decades.
Judging from the American reaction to David Cameron's speech, however, it seems that Britain can expect little support from the Anglosphere in its opposition to the centralizing EU tendencies. Prior to his speech, Washington warned Cameron not to be too critical of the EU and not to allow a referendum on the EU.
Philip Gordon, the US assistant secretary for European Affairs, was sent to London to tell the British government that "referendums have often turned countries inwards." It is unclear what that assessment is based on: countries that allow referendums are usually the most democratic in the world and democracy is characterized by openness to the outside world. A Downing Street spokesman reacted to the American intervention with the remark: "The US wants an outward looking EU with Britain in it, and so do we."
"We benefit when the EU is unified, speaking with a single voice. That is in the American interest," Gordon said. The British newspaper The Guardianremarked that the American intervention "appeared to be a clear message to the [British] government that the 'special relationship' [between the UK and US] would be devalued in the eyes of the Obama administration if Britain left the EU, or got bogged down in drawn-out negotiations on the details of its membership." If anything, the American intervention, in the form of a soft threat, indicating its refusal to back Britain, shows that the "special relationship" is already over. That is, if it was not already over four years ago, based on Obama's first act on his first day in office: the unsolicited return of a bust of Winston Churchill, on loan to the US from to from Britain. (What would have been wrong with a closet?)
The White House also warned Britain that its significance to the world and to the US would be weakened by leaving the EU. Persuading Britain to stay in the EU would be "in America's national interest," according to a senior US official. William Legge, the Earl of Dartmouth, reacted by pointing out that the position of the Obama administration is not in line with America's traditional view: "There have been times in history when the US had been very pleased that Britain has remained independent of the continent, and we expect that to continue," he said. "It is not the job of the UK to make the work of US diplomats easier. It is our job to secure our own interests."
Dartmouth is a member of the European Parliament for the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP). This party advocates withdrawal of Britain from the EU. It did very well in recent by-elections, and currently polls almost 14%. UKIP is also very critical of Islamization.
Clive Crook, senior editor of The Atlantic, criticized the Obama administration by comparing Obama's attitude towards Britain and the EU with that of the US and NAFTA: "I think Britain should call on the US to start recasting NAFTA as a full monetary and political union. Be visionary, for heaven's sake. Put the Federal Reserve in Mexico City as a measure of good faith. Europe would benefit if North America were unified, speaking with a single voice."
John Redwood, a Conservative British MP and a former cabinet minister, wrote on his blog: "It is a crowning irony that the Obama administration now thinks the UK should be subservient to [EU] rule in many areas, just so the US has a more acceptable lobbyist at the EU court. We wish to be self governing. We have no wish to be told that we should lose our democracy in the cause of advancing America's."
But, of course, what is at stake is not advancing America's democracy at the expense of Britain's. America's democracy cannot be incompatible with Britain's. What we are witnessing is the Obama administration actively interfering in European politics to advance European centralization. This is a threat to democracy and freedom in Europe. History will show that it will be a threat to democracy and freedom in America as well.gatestoneinstitute

When video footage from 2010 of then-Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Morsi calling Jews "the descendants of apes and pigs" surfaced two weeks ago, it properly focused international attention on the Brotherhood's bigoted ideology. Morsi's comments, after all, are just the tip of the iceberg for the Brotherhood, which has long argued that Egyptian Christians should be barred from running for president, and which recently pushed through a new constitution that denies religious rights to Baha'is and Shiites.
Given that the Muslim Brotherhood is now Egypt's ruling party and Morsi is Egypt's president, the international community must challenge the Brotherhood on its many hatreds to ensure that they are never acted upon. In this vein, Morsi's visit to Germany on Wednesday represents an important opportunity to force him to recant perhaps the vilest example of the Brotherhood's intolerance: its denial of the Holocaust.
Ironically, Morsi's visit will come only days after International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which the German government first established in 1996 and the United Nations later recognized in 2005 to mark the sixtieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp. Although the purpose of Holocaust Remembrance Day is to raise awareness of genocides to prevent them from being repeated, the Muslim Brotherhood used the occasion in 2010 to argue that the Holocaust is "the largest swindling operation in history."
According to the Brotherhood, American intelligence agencies invented the Holocaust "myth" during World War II "to destroy the image of their German opponents" and "to justify a massive war of destruction against military and civilian facilities of the Axis powers." In its revisionist history, the Brotherhood further accused "world Zionists and Israel" of using the Holocaust for "the political and financial blackmail of Germany and other Eastern European countries," claiming that reparations "didn't go to the Holocaust victims or their heirs, but to the Israeli war treasury in the greatest funding operation for the real Holocaust against the Palestinian people." Finally, the Brotherhood invented statistics to argue that many fewer than six million Jews were killed during the Holocaust. "The German census established that the number of German Jews ranged from 600-700,000 and half-a-million remained when the war ended," according to the Brotherhood's Holocaust history, "And this doesn't include the Jews who died because of natural death, road accidents, and as victims of Allied air raids."
While many dismiss Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood's Holocaust revisionism as offensive rhetoric with little bearing on policy, that is not how Egypt's non-Islamist opposition sees it. When all liberal and Christian members withdrew from the Brotherhood-dominated constitution-writing assembly in November, opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei explained to Der Spiegel, "We all fear that the Muslim Brotherhood will pass a document with Islamist undertones that marginalizes the rights of women and religious minorities. Who sits in this group? One person, who wants to ban music, because it's allegedly against Sharia law; another, who denies the Holocaust; another, who openly condemns democracy." In other words, the Brotherhood's hateful denial of genocide is the proverbial canary in the coalmine - an important signal of its deeply intolerant nature that may foreshadow disaster for Egypt's religious minorities domestically, as well as for the future of regional peace.
Indeed, during its first year as Egypt's new ruling party, the Muslim Brotherhood has stoked sectarian tensions repeatedly by blaming Egypt's declining fortunes on its Christian minority. For example, following a January 15 train crash that left 19 dead and over 100 injured, a Brotherhood youth Facebook page emphasized that the train operator was Christian, and proceeded to list other train accidents that involved Christian drivers. Similarly, the Brotherhood has tarred its opponents by posting images of opposition leaders standing with prominent Christians on Facebook and accusing a prominent Christian businessman of trying to launch a coup. And during the chaotic protests of the past few days, the Brotherhood's official website accused Christians of leading "Black Bloc," an anonymous group that has been clashed violently with police.
Meanwhile, the Muslim Brotherhood has stated repeatedly that it intends to end the 1979 peace treaty with Israel. In this vein, the Brotherhood's legal committee announced in November that it was drafting legislation to unilaterally amend the treaty, and a top Brotherhood foreign policy official told a closed salon that Morsi was "cancelling normalization with the Zionist entity gradually." Most alarmingly, in recent months, the Supreme Guide twice called on Muslims to launch a "holy jihad" for Jerusalem.
Given Germany's central role in combating Holocaust denial as a mechanism for preaching tolerance, it should not forgo the opportunity to press Morsi and his Brotherhood colleagues on their hateful views. Morsi, after all, is coming to Europe hat-in-hand, asking for billions of dollars to bail out Egypt's struggling economy. German officials and media should therefore expect Morsi to behave like a responsible leader who understands the painful realities of history, and not like a hateful ideologue that seeks to revise it. By forcing him to choose now, Germany might be able to divert Egypt from its current trajectory towards intolerance and conflict.theatlantic

The coalition STOP THE BOMB will protest with a rally against the invitation of Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi to the German oundation Deutsche Gesellschaft für Auswärtige Politik (DGAP): Monday, February 4, 2013 a 11.30 a.m. at Rauchstraße 17, 10787 Berlin, if the event will not be cancelled. Here is a press release of STOP THE BOMB on Salehi's visit to Germany. Please find more information on the German page.
You can find the documentation of our protests against the invitation of the Iranian vice-minister for Economic Affairs Mohammed Reza Farzin to the DGAP in October 2011 here. More...

The campaign STOP THE BOMB protests against the invitation of Ali Akbar Salehi to the Munich Security Conference and to the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Auswärtige Politik (DGAP), a German think tank. Ali Akbar Salehi, the Iranian foreign minister, is invited to participate at the 49th Munich Security Conference, which will take place from 1 - 3 February in Munich. After the conference, Salehi will travel to Berlin and speak at the DGAP, an institute which is partly funded by the Foreign Office. [1]STOP THE BOMB protests in the strongest terms against the invitation of Salehi. "The Iranian regime exploits the talks to gain time for the development of its atomic bomb. Salehi's invitation to Germany sends a signal to Tehran that there is still time for business as usual, instead of exerting pressure", says Michael Spaney, spokesman for STOP THE BOMB.

Three rounds of international talks with the Iranian regime on the nuclear conflict ended in 2012 without result. The leadership in Tehran refused to allow inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to visit its military facilities and openly admits that they deceive IAEA inspectors with false information. [2] The new talks with Salehi are held while in Iran a new wave of executions and public torture is taking place. [3]Until he had been appointed foreign minister of Iran, Salehi himself, as head of the Iranian nuclear program, was on the EU sanctions list and banned from entering the EU. STOP THE BOMB spokesperson Michael Spaney comments: "The Iranian regime, despite all talks, stays with its antisemitic and warmongering policy without compromise. The Iranian leadership continuously declares its intention to destroy the state of Israel, keeps on working on its nuclear arms programme and sends its terrorist allies to Syria and other countries – even into the EU. One shouldn't enhance the status of the regime with useless talks. However, public talks of the German government and the DGAP with Iranian oppositional forces would be of highest importance." [4]The coalition STOP THE BOMB will protest in Berlin against Salehi's visit to the DGAP next Monday, February 4th at Rauchstrasse 17, 10787 Berlin. [5]More...

As the world marked Holocaust Remembrance Day on Sunday, a senior aide to Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi alleged that the Holocaust is a “myth” and an “industry America invented.”

The aide, Fathi Shihab-Eddim, is responsible for appointing the editors of Egypt’s state-run newspapers. He explained that “U.S. intelligence agencies in cooperation with their counterparts in allied nations during World War II created [the Holocaust] to destroy the image of their opponents in Germany, and to justify war and massive destruction against military and civilian facilities of the Axis powers, and especially to hit Hiroshima and Nagasaki with the atomic bomb.”
Somebody get President Morsi, looks like the administration needs him on damage-control duty.nationalreview

Philipp Missfelder, a deputy in the Bundestag and foreign policy spokesman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel's party, sharply criticized on Tuesday an EU counter-terrorism official for his remarks about playing down the need to list Hezbollah as a terrorist entity within Europe's territories.
The EU's counter-terrorism official in Brussels, Gilles de Kerchove, told the EU Observer on Monday that prior to declaring Hezbollah a terrorist agency, the organization must first reach conclusions with "strong evidence" that it was the military wing of Hezbollah that bombed Burgas.
"That's the prerequisite, even in legal terms, but then, as always in the listing process, you need to ask yourself: 'Is this the right thing to do?'" Kerchove said.
In an exclusive statement to The Jerusalem Post, Missfelder fired back, "I can understand this statement in no way. Hezbollah must feel the pressure."
Missfelder said "Statements like this are counterproductive. Terrorism is an integral part of Hezbollah's overall strategy that undermines the political stability of Lebanon and threatens the existence of the Jewish state of Israel."
"There has never been doubt about that. By no means can the EU tolerate that this group operates from European soil. Therefore it is absolutely urgent to put this group on the EU terror list," he said.
Israeli and American intelligence officials attribute the July suicide bombing of an Israeli tour bus in Burgas, Bulgaria as the work of a joint Hezbollah-Iran operation. The terrorism attack caused the deaths of five Israelis and a Bulgarian bus driver.
A German foreign ministry spokesman wrote the Post on Monday by email, saying "if there is enough legal proof presented for involvement of the organization [Hezbollah] in terror activities in Europe, a listing in the EU will be examined.".
The French government has blocked a listing of Hezbollah and the views of de Kerchove mirror reports about French opposition to outlawing Hezbollah.
France is believed to not want to lose diplomatic leverage with Lebanon's government. Hezbollah is part of the coalition government in Beirut.
Gilles de Kerchove told the EU Observer: "For Hezbollah, you might ask, given the situation in Lebanon, which is a highly fragile, highly fragmented country, is listing it going to help you achieve what you want?"
"There is no automatic listing just because you have been behind a terrorist attack. It's not only the legal requirement that you have to take into consideration, it's also a political assessment of the context and the timing," de Kerchove stated.
The Bulgarian government is slated to issue the findings of its investigation in February.
jpost

Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Sweden’s population grew from 9 million to 9.5 million in the years 2004-2012, mainly due to immigration from “countries like Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia”. 16 percent of all newborns have mothers born in non-Western countries. Employment rate among immigrants: 54 percent.

Sweden now has the second highest number of rapes in the world, after South Africa, which at 53.2 per 100,000 is six times higher than the United States. Statistics now suggest that 1 out of every 4 Swedish women will be raped.
In 2003, Sweden’s rape statistics were higher than average at 9.24, but in 2005 they shot up to 36.8 and by 2008 were up to 53.2. Now they are almost certainly even higher as Muslim immigrants continue forming a larger percentage of the population.
With Muslims represented in as many as 77 percent of the rape cases and a major increase in rape cases paralleling a major increase in Muslim immigration, the wages of Muslim immigration are proving to be a sexual assault epidemic by a misogynistic ideology.
The statistics are skewed by urban centers where the Islamic colonists cluster. In Stockholm this summer there was an average of 5 rapes a day. Stockholm has gone from a Swedish city to a city that is one-third immigrant and is between a fifth and a quarter Muslim.
Sweden, like the rest of the West, will have to come to terms with the fact that it can either have female equality or Muslim immigration. It cannot have both.frontpagemag

A SOFT judge who allowed an al-Qaeda terrorist to stay in Britain over fears he might kill himself faced calls to quit last night.
Mr Justice Mitting — who recently upheld hate preacher Abu Qatada’s appeal to stay here — ruled the Algerian zealot’s human rights would be breached if he was booted out.

Incredibly the fanatic, who was part of a plot to poison Tube passengers with highly toxic ricin in 2003, is out on BAIL — despite admitting he is a threat to the UK.

The married man, known only as ‘G’, is believed to have provided fake passports to other terrorists.

Patricia Bingley, 78, of Clacton-on-Sea, Essex — who lost her son Kevin in the 9/11 attacks in the US — said: “This judge must resign immediately.“We should put this terrorist on the first plane to Algeria and if we can’t, send him to America. They’ll know what to do with him.”
The Algerian, 46, claimed asylum when he was caught entering the UK in 1995 on a fake passport. He tried to hang himself in his prison cell in September 2005.

Mr Justice Mitting said: “We are persuaded the risk G would commit suicide, especially after arrival in Algiers, is high.”

But he told six other Algerian terror suspects they must leave the country.
They include two fundamentalists linked to al-Qaeda terrorist Kamel Bourgass who stabbed hero cop DC Stephen Oake, 40, to death after breaking free during a terror raid in Crumpsall, Manchester, in 2003.
Bourgass, later jailed for life, masterminded the London ricin plot.More...

Thousands of valuable pieces of art the Nazis stole before and during World War II were never returned and are still stored in German museums, and some of them have made their way into government offices in Berlin, according to a new report.

A carpet from the collection of Nazi leader Hermann Göring, for example, is lying in the German Chancellery in Berlin, Der Spiegel magazine reported this week. Tapestry from the same collection can also be found in the German government’s guest house in Petersberg near Bonn, and a sofa from the possession of Adolf Hitler’s personal art thief Hans Posse stands in the office of the president, the magazine found.

In an investigation in Bavaria, Spiegel reporters found countless heirlooms of leading Nazi officials, including a platinum watch that Hitler gave as a birthday present to his future wife Eva Braun in 1939.

“Currently, the gem is called ‘Stored Item 3rd Reich’ in a Munich museum, registered as an ‘Estate of Eva Hitler, formerly Eva Braun,’” the magazine writes.

After World War II, the Germans started looking for the rightful owners of the stolen artwork but once the search was concluded in 1966 many items were loaned to museums. More than 650 pieces of art went to government offices, according to the Spiegel investigation.

Besides Eva Braun’s watch, Munich’s Pinakothek der Moderne museum also has countless objects from the possession of Goering, who was notorious for looting property and artwork, much of it from Jewish owners. Such items includes platinum tie rings, gold cufflinks, a ring decorated with diamonds, a golden champagne goblet and a gold cigarette case decorated with diamonds that his wife and daughter had given him in 1940.

Anna Baltzer -- apparently neither a Fulbright Scholar, nor a descendant of Holocaust survivors, nor an alumna of the Birthright Program -- appears to be just a fraud and a fabulist. So why is Oxford having her speak January 31st?

Anna Baltzer, a pretty lady who heads the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation (USCEIO) in Washington, DC., has developed a platform for herself going about the world lecturing as a Jew who once supported the State of Israel, but who had an epiphany and discovered that Israel and "Zionists" were exploiting and abusing the Palestinian people. The USCEIO is, in fact, the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) renamed for the purpose of lobbying Congress in Washington. It was created by Huwaida Arraf, one of the co-founders of the ISM who also serves on the group's steering committee.
Placing Anna Baltzer as the titular head of the Campaign was intended to convince both Jews and non-Jews that opposition to Israel's existence is fine because even Jews such as her believe in the necessity of destroying the Jewish state, especially through boycotts and divestment. Anna Baltzer is a modern day Tokyo Rose for the ISM against Israel: she speaks at anti-Israel events and promotes boycott and divestment campaigns against Israel, in support of terrorist groups such as Hamas in its plans to destroy Israel any way it can. She has participated or helped at demonstations staged by Code Pink, Global Exchange, the Gaza Flotilla, Viva Palestina and other anti-Israel groups that make up the ISM.
USCEIO has been frantically sending out fundraising email blasts and announcing on its website that Ms. Baltzer will appear in a debate about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to be presented by the distinguished Oxford Union in England on January 31st. According to the Oxford Union's website, "The Union is the world's most prestigious debating society, with an unparalleled reputation for bringing international guests and speakers to Oxford. It has been established for 189 years, aiming to promote debate and discussion not just in Oxford University, but across the globe."
The Oxford Union has delivered these debates by distinguished academic, religious and national leaders from ex-President Ronald Reagan to the Dali Lama. The purpose of the debates is the furtherance of education and knowledge. The subject of this debate will be: "This House Believes That Israel is a Force for Good in the Middle East."
The announcement of the three debaters for the anti-Israel point of view, however, disturbingly advertises propagandists and fabulists such as Ilan Pappe, Ghada Karmi and most importantly, Anna Baltzer, who is billed on the Oxford Union's website as head of the USCEIO and who will apparently speak in opposition to Israel's right to exist.
Ilan Pappe has already been proven to be bankrupt as a scholar after it was proven in court he was involved in fabricating a phony massacre by Israeli forces of the Arab village of Tantura in 1948. In a defamation and libel lawsuit brought by veterans of the Alexandroni Brigade in Israel, Pappe's PhD student under his advice admitted on the witness stand that he fabricated the entire massacre with his supervisor's knowledge and that he was paid $6,000 by the PLO to do so.
The other speaker alongside Anna Baltzer will be Ghada Kharmi, a Palestinian academic at the University of Exeter, Britain, and the author of Married to Another Man: Israel's Dilemma in Palestine. Her writings are merely polemics devoid of any history or facts with which to back them up. She claims, incredibly, for example, that Israel has never made a peace offer to the Palestinians, along with standard slanderous Palestinian propaganda and claims that masquerade as facts -- such as that Israel violates "international law" by the building of settlements, which are completely legal per UN Resolution 242, and the stopping of the Gaza Flotillas that was completely legal by international maritime law. Karmi encourages war by proxy, such as writing in support of the British boycott of Israeli academics and Israeli universities.
What is Karmi's intellectual solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which she also claims is the reason for al Qaeda? She says Israel must become one state called Palestine; must withdraw to the 1949 borders; must give the Palestinians half of Jerusalem, and then allow seven million Palestinians to move inside Israel, creating a flood of Muslims that would demographically overwhelm the current Jewish population there. As for terrorism, she glosses over it as the desperate actions of some extremists who are fighting "colonialism." Her writings hardly reflect anything in the way of solid research or intellectual balance.
Stephen Stotsky of CAMERA.org has written an excellent exposé of Baltzer's lies about Israel. However, new information has arisen about Baltzer's background and history as a Jew.
In her Wikipedia entry and various speeches she has presented, mostly to Christian churches, Ms. Baltzer has claimed she comes from a Jewish family in which her grandparents were Holocaust survivors; that she was a Fulbright Scholar from Columbia University, and that at first she was pro-Israel. After touring with Fulbright in 2003 in Turkey, she alleges she visited "Palestine," Syria and Iran and met "friends" who "educated" her on the suffering of the Palestinians at Israeli hands, so that today she is a dedicated anti-Zionist. She included a cry at the end of an interview taped in Ireland in 2010 on an anti-Israel radio station that it is her hope "Inshallah, to one day bring down Zionism" -- meaning to end the Jewish state.
More recently, Anna Baltzer, back in the United States, lent her name and prestige to an attempt by the Students for Justice in Palestine at UC San Diego to prompt the entire student body association there to boycott and divest from Israel. The appearance, presumably intended to be a springboard to spread the boycott and divestment to other campuses, failed. While the event was being debated at UC SAN Diego, Anna Baltzer made a video, which appeared on You Tube, in support of boycotts and divestments from Israel, and directed to the anti-Israel campaign at the UC Campus. In this video, she claimed that she went on a Birthright tour -- a program that provides free trips to Israel for Jewish college students and recent graduates -- in the year 2000 as an enthusiastic pro-Zionist Jewish girl. She claims that after finishing the tour, she researched the suffering of the Palestinians and became a supporter of the anti-Israel movement.
There is just one problem with this scenario: According to my research, Anna Baltzer never went on a Birthright tour of Israel in the year 2000 or any other time. Inquiries to the New York and Israel offices to ascertain if she went with Birthright, revealed absolutely no record of any Anna Baltzer attending the program ever, let alone in year 2000. In short, it seems that Anna Baltzer lied about her participation in Birthright to convey the false impression that she was once a loyal Jew who supported the Jewish homeland but had discovered the justification for Palestinians' goals to overthrow Israel.
Further, after researching Ms. Baltzer's claims of being a Fulbright Scholar from Columbia in 2003, it has been determined from both Columbia's and the Fulbright websites, as well as Fulbright officials, that Anna Baltzer was never a Fulbright scholar either. A list of Fulbright Scholars at the Fulbright website contains the names of all Fulbright scholars from the United States and abroad from the late 90's to the present. Ms. Baltzer's name is nowhere to be found.
Anna Baltzer's claims about her personal and academic background should come as no surprise: it has gained her entrée to speaking engagements at colleges across the US and abroad where she spreads lies against Israel. At her presentation at St. John the Worker's Presbyterian Church in Berkeley, California in 2007, Anna Baltzer recounted a tale of a pregnant Palestinian mother who, in an emergency, was taken by ambulance, but forbidden to pass a checkpoint manned by Israeli soldiers, who had told her that her ambulance could not pass through the checkpoint until 7 am, although she had arrived in an a Code 3 state at 6:30 am. Baltzer claimed -- drawing gasps from the audience -- that due to this delay, the woman miscarried twin fetuses. In an implicit comparison of Israeli soldiers to Nazis, she alleged the IDF soldiers kept telling the poor woman that they "were just following orders" -- a veiled reference to the Nazis' excuses, at the Nuremberg trials after the World War II, for their role in the death camps. There was no mention that the checkpoints had been erected in the first place to stop what had been incessant terrorist attacks and suicide bombings.
When asked the name of the woman who had miscarried, the location of the checkpoint, the time of day, the names of reliable witnesses and the outcome of any military investigation of such cruelty, she said that she did not know, that she had not been there. She even said she was surprised to hear that the Israeli army would have received a formal complaint if such an event had actually occurred. Pressed still further about the authenticity of her tale, in a book she was selling that supposedly contained her personal eyewitness accounts of Israeli atrocities against Arabs, Baltzer admitted she did not know the details because the story had been told to her second hand by Lamis Deek, a well-known Arab propagandist from the ISM. In the 2010 radio interview in Ireland, however, Anna Baltzer changed the story and said, after recounting the same tale, that she interviewed the poor Arab woman who had lost the two babies -- again with no names, dates or places.
The ISM with which Baltzer works regularly uses the imagery of Holocaust survivors who see the need to end the Jewish state. Hedy Epstein, in her eighties, is paraded around by the ISM at their boycott and divestment events in California colleges. Epstein also appeared on the ISM Flotilla Boats to Gaza, and has always been presented as a "Holocaust survivor" who is against Israel. Research has shown that as a child Ms. Epstein spent the war in the safety of England, and was never in a concentration camp or even on the European continent. Rather, in her youth, Ms. Epstein was party to several pro-Soviet communist movements, whose Stalinist leanings were anti-Zionist, and she even supported Pol Pot's regime of mass murder.
Using the same "Holocaust survivor" imagery, Baltzer claims she is the descendant of Holocaust survivors who instilled in her a need to support Palestinian aims against Israeli persecution. After researching her grandparents through the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum in Israel, as well as the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, to see if her family were actually in concentration camps, nothing could be found. This, too, appears to be a fabrication by Baltzer, or at best an embellishment, like Hedy Epstein's, of being a Holocaust survivor.
The Oxford Union's President was distressed to learn these facts about Ms. Baltzer's academic fraud and said she would share such information with the faculty advisers with the possible outcome of her being removed from the debate.
An educational debate, especially at a university as august as Oxford, should feature academics or speakers who are genuine, not imposters or fakes planted to distort facts and slander and demonize a fellow democracy. Anna Baltzer seems to be neither a Fulbright scholar, not a descendant of Holocaust survivors nor an alumna of the Birthright program. She appears to be just a fraud and a fabulist. So why is Oxford having her speak?
If you would like to express your opinion to the Oxford Union about Ms. Baltzer's lying to them about her background, to pass herself off at an academic event, please email Oxford Union's President Maria Rioumine with your comments at President@Oxford-Union.org while there is still time left before this fraudulent "debate."gatestoneinstitute

In the spring of 1945, Harald Quandt, a 23-year-old officer in the German Luftwaffe, was being held as a prisoner of war by Allied forces in the Libyan port city of Benghazi when he received a farewell letter from his mother, Magda Goebbels – the wife of Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels.
The hand-written note confirmed the devastating news he had heard weeks earlier: his mother had committed suicide with her husband on May 1, after slipping their six children cyanide capsules in Adolf Hitler’s underground bunker in Berlin.More...

The political battle America, Germany, Russia and Albania with the expansion of the Albanian “Lebensraum” in Serbia has turned into a wave of violence against the Serbian cemeteries and now threatens to be a new spark to armed conflicts in the Balkans.By Marko Lopušina
Last week, Serbian police removed an illegal monument from the center of the city of Presevo. The monument marked the Albanian war dead that belong to an armed Albanian group which Belgrade considers a terrorist organization. The monument itself was not destroyed, but was moved to the outskirts of the town of Presevo.
Kosovo Albanians, however, reacted with a wave of violence against Serbian cemeteries, destroying 25 of them, and demolishing a monument in Vitina that commemorates anti-Nazi resistance. An enraged Albanian Muslim mob also destroyed the monument of the Serbian children murdered in Gorazdevac by armed Albanian gunmen.
Five tombstones were demolished at the old Orthodox cemetery located in the courtyard of the church of St. Nicholas. In the village of Belo Polje near Pec a house, owned by a Serb, was burned down but luckily for the Serb, Miodrag Petrovic, he was not in the house when the fire broke out. In the mixed village Drajkovce in Štrpce, Albanians burned burned down stack of hay.
The Head of the OSCE Mission in Kosovo, Jean-Claude Schlumberger, condemned the desecration of Orthodox cemeteries and religious monuments in Kosovo, as “unacceptable and not only violates religious and ethnic rights of those to whom they belong, but of society as a whole.”
Although representatives of international structures in Kosovo – UNMIK, EULEX and KFOR strongly condemned the rampage by Albanian extremists and urged them to exercise restraint, Albanian extremists in Vitina responded by flattening to the ground dozen gravestones at the Orthodox cemetery.
More...

Monday, January 28, 2013

As readers may have heard, the Liberal Democrat MP for Bradford East – David Ward – made a reprehensible comparison between the Holocaust and the Arab-Israeli conflict just days before Holocaust Memorial Day is marked in his country and others on January 27th.
The Commentator, which first broke the story, has the details:

“British Member of Parliament David Ward has issued a statement to the ‘Asian Image’ magazine, juxtaposing the Middle East Conflict with the Holocaust.
As Holocaust Memorial Day is to be observed on Sunday, the Liberal Democrat MP, upon signing the Holocaust Educational Trust’s Book of Commitment in the House of Commons, stated:
‘Having visited Auschwitz twice – once with my family and once with local schools – I am saddened that the Jews, who suffered unbelievable levels of persecution during the Holocaust, could within a few years of liberation from the death camps be inflicting atrocities on Palestinians in the new State of Israel and continue to do so on a daily basis in the West Bank and Gaza.’”

Ward later gave a statement to The Commentator in which he said:

“The Holocaust was one of the worst examples in history man’s inhumanity to man. When faced with examples of atrocious behavior, we must learn from them. It appears that the suffering by the Jews has not transformed their views on how others should be treated.”

The situation worsened as Ward gave an interview to Sky News and another interview with him emerged from last November – during Operation Pillar of Cloud – on BBC Radio Leeds, in which he said:

“If all the illegal settlements were vacated and the land given back there wouldn’t be any rocket attacks.”

“He accused “the Jews” in Israel of “inflicting atrocities on Palestinians… on a daily basis.”

Except he didn’t. Ward referred to “the Jews” in general.
So why did the BBC think it appropriate to try to tone down and ‘contextualise’ Ward’s abhorrent remarks?Update: read Chas Newkey Burden’s commentary on the subject here.Update 2: David Ward has now issued an apology. The BBC has published another article on the subject in which it repeats the use of the same phrasing employed in its first report.
Likewise, the BBC News Twitter account also phrased Tweets promoting its latest report in a manner which clearly suggests that Ward’s remarks related to Israelis instead of “the Jews” as a collective.

The BBC tweets about the David Ward remarks.

Once again, one must ask why the BBC appears to be trying so hard to blur the antisemitic nature of Ward’s remarks and why in doing so, it seems to be unaware that “drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis” is also defined as antisemitism under the EUMC working definition.

How bad must things get before people notice that their country has an anti-Semitism problem?

How bad must things get before people notice that their country has an anti-Semitism problem?
Three striking stories from recent days go some way to demonstrating that though Britain may not admit it, we have a problem.
Earlier this month the Israeli writer Caroline Glick came to London to take part in one of the Intelligence Squared debates. Intelligence Squared is a smart, up-market debating forum which attracts world-class speakers and a somewhat upper-echelon audience. The motion put before the audience on this occasion was: "Israel is destroying itself with its settlement policy. If settlement expansion continues Israel will have no future."
There are good places and reasons to debate Israeli settlement policy. But it is, to say the least, questionable to make the one Israel debate in a debate series a discussion proposing that it is settlements that threaten Israel's future. Rather than (plucking them off the top of my head) the promise of nuclear-bomb-owning Mullahs or say (admittedly old story) the seven-decade long refusal of any leading Palestinian to recognise the Jewish State? There is something obscene about presenting a debate in such terms. But debates need to be punchy and provocative. They also need to involve open minds. What Glick and the other Israeli guest on her side – Danny Dayan – had to witness was very far from a demonstration of that.
Glick rightly saw that the case for Israel needed to be made. But against her and Dayan were two young darlings of the London anti-Israel establishment. The undeservedly arrogant J-Street founder Daniel Levy enjoys a following in such London circles because of his father (Lord Levy)'s money. Meanwhile, the other member proposing the anti-Israel motion, William Sieghart, is a member of a prominent London family who did poorly in the family brains distribution and so has ended up promoting Hamas. Both are the sort of rich, privileged figures who mistake their own ignorance and stupidity for profundity with daring. Their careers are spent providing respectability to those who would erase the Jewish people.
Unfortunately, and predictably, the smart London audience sided overwhelmingly with the local idiots, heckling and shouting down points made by the visiting team. The hostility – heckling, booing and more – shown towards Glick and Dayan was unique and appalling. At the end the vote was 5 to 1 in favour of Levy and Sieghart.
In a searing response to what she had seen, Glick penned the article 'Bye-bye London', writing:

I can say without hesitation that I hope never to return to Britain. I actually don't see any point. Jews are targeted by massive anti-Semitism of both the social and physical varieties. Why would anyone Jewish want to live there?

Of course this is the sort of thing that is reacted to angrily by most British Jewish spokespeople. They claim such sentiments are "over-the-top," "unhelpful" or some other pseudo Foreign Office phrase.
Such panjandrums also point to the "successes" they have. These routinely include, for instance, the numbers of prominent politicians and "faith leaders" who take part in Holocaust Memorial Day events. Thus events around this year's Holocaust Memorial Day have been particularly instructive. Take the scandal which enveloped one Liberal Democrat MP in the days before this year's commemoration.
Until last week absolutely nobody had heard of David Ward MP. He is one of those one-man walking demonstrations of the need to have fewer MPs. But last week he became a minor figure when the ballsy "Commentator" website picked up on the fact that Ward had had a "Jihad-Jenny" moment. These are moments named after the disgraced Liberal Democrat peer, and former MP, Baroness Jenny "Boom" Tonge, whose track-record of slurs and libels against Jews and Israel mounted so significantly over many years, that finally even the Liberal Democrat party ended up saying she had gone too far.
Anyhow, in his "Jihad Jenny" moment, Mr. Ward was recorded saying:

Having visited Auschwitz twice – once with my family and once with local schools – I am saddened that the Jews, who suffered unbelievable levels of persecution during the Holocaust, could within a few years of liberation from the death camps be inflicting atrocities on Palestinians in the new State of Israel and continue to do so on a daily basis in the West Bank and Gaza.

Now Mr. Ward had a number of ways of explaining himself when a backlash against his comments got underway. But among them he explained that he had gone to Holocaust Memorial Day events in the past. Some people saw this as the anti-Semite's version of the old "some of my best friends are black" defense, famously made by racists caught on the back foot. It may, however, signify something else. Mr Ward was careful to stress that he had indeed taken something away from such events. And there is a serious problem: You may get someone to jump the low bar of attending a "commemoration" of the Holocaust. But they may still take from it – as Mr Ward clearly did – a profoundly anti-Jewish message. In a society that increasingly equates Jews with Nazis, it does not matter how many Holocaust "commemorations" someone has been pushed into going to. The culture has gone rancid.
This was further demonstrated by the fact that this year on Holocaust Memorial Day itself, the Sunday Times of London – bastion of the moderate center of British politics – ran as its principal cartoon a characteristically witless "satire" by Gerald Scarfe. With the caption "Will cementing peace continue," the cartoon depicted a thuggish-looking Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu building a wall made of bricks, blood and Palestinians. Perhaps Mr Scarfe attended the Intelligence Squared debate?
What these three things have in common is now unmistakeable -- as are the conclusions we must draw from them.
Jews will continue to live in Britain, and in the main, continue to live perfectly peaceful and pleasant lives. But there will be a price. And that price will be the volume of their support for Israel. For the "decent" mainstream has made a decision: Israelis are now what the Nazis were then. The Israelis are the easy target for needed outrage, the focal-center of pretended morality and the diversionary enemy in an era where the real problems seem too large to tackle.
Naturally there will be enough people to continue for a while to demand the odd complaint about this or that. They may manage to force a backtrack here and there. But these will be forced not because anybody has been persuaded of the complete wrong-headedness of what they have said – nor because they have realized the unbelievable wickedness and inaccuracy of their claims – but simply because the "timing" may have been inappropriate, or it should not have been said in this way, or on this or that day, or to these or those people. What all these events have in common is that they demonstrate that the friends of truth are losing. Any wins on these terms are skirmish wins in a war which has turned against the Jewish people.gatestoneinstitute